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Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain


Born: November 30, 1835
Died: April 21, 1910

Background Information

  • Attended Oxford University
  • Earlier in life signed pictures by the name of Josh and also Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass
  • Most noted for novels of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  • Known as the father of American Literature
  • Last 20 years of life was anti-imperialistic and anti-capitalistic
  • Vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League
  • Wrote many political pamphlets and books against imperialism



Views on Imperialism

  • Originally for United States imperialism in Cuba and Philippines until he saw what United States planned on doing
  • Felt the Filipinos should give their freedom to themselves and not let the Americans do it
  • Believed in imperialism up until reading the Treaty of Paris
  • Originally believed the U.S. was fighting exclusivley for the freedom of Cuba and not as a pretext for expansion
  • Argued the Fillipinos were capable of governing themselves
  • Believed we were there not to grant them freedom but to keep them under our control
  • Idea of the Anti-Inperialist League believed that we were merely replacing Spain in the Philippines
  • Wrote about the horrors of the U.S. Army to the Filippinos for the Anti-Imperialist League

References

Two references of Twain would be William Jennings Bryan and Samuel Gompers. Both were members of the Anti-Imperialist League and possessed the same views that the U.S. was wrong in the way they treated the issue of the Philippines.

Sources

  • Primary:
  1. Zwick, Jim. "Mark Twain on Imperialism". HistoryWiz. 11/13/08 <http://www.historywiz.com/primarysources/marktwain-imperialism.htm>.
  2. "Mark Twain". Library of Congress. November 13, 2008 http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/twain.html.



  • Secondary:
  1. Titta, R.. "Mark Twain and the Onset of the Imperialist Period". The Internationalist. 1113/08 <http://www.internationalist.org/marktwain3.html>.
  2. Ohtake-Gonzalez, Vivian. "Mark Twain". The Spanish American War Centennial Website. November 13, 2008 http://www.spanamwar.com/Twain.htm.